The Atlantic Council's Art of the Future Project is driven by the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security’s mandate to advance thinking and planning for the future international security environment. The project’s core mission is to cultivate a community of interest in works and ideas arising from the intersection of creativity and expectations about how emerging heroes and antagonists, disruptive technologies, and novel cultural and economic concepts may animate tomorrow’s world.
The Atlantic Council promotes constructive US leadership and engagement in the world based on the central role of the Atlantic community, working with its allies and partners, to meet global challenges.

Editor’s Note: Task & Purpose is proud to publish this fictional essay by Karin Lowachee — the 3rd place submission of a writing contest presented by the Armed Services Arts Partnership and the Atlantic Council’s The Art of the Future Project. The contest sought letters home from a conflict set in the 2030s as part of a first-person exploration of what homecoming might be like after future wars.

Editor’s Note: Task & Purpose is proud to publish this fictional essay by Michael Sierra — the 2nd place submission of a writing contest presented by the Armed Services Arts Partnership and the Atlantic Council’s The Art of the Future Project. The contest sought letters home from a conflict set in the 2030s as part of a first-person exploration of what homecoming might be like after future wars.

Letters home from soldiers offer one of the most intimate windows into wartime experiences. Whether written on parchment paper or in a Facebook message, the recounting of hopes and fears in stories, funny and sad, are an important way to understand something as complex as wartime experiences from a personal point of view. This has been true in the past, even with censorship, and it will be true in the future, too, no matter what form letters take.